Chaotic Resolve
by lostsoul512
Summary: “There’s no such thing as witches,” I said quietly. Already the man was backing into his house and closing the door. His feral gaze was trained on me, staring as if I were a minion of Satan himself. “You’ll be next,” he warned. “You will be next.”


A/N: So, this was actually a story for history class on the Salem Witch Trials. But, I liked it so much, I had to post it. I own all the characters, but I don't own Salem or my history class. I hope that counts as some sort of disclaim.

The first time I was condemned to Hell, I was sixteen. I was young, and had so much life left to live. I was plagued with injustices. The wind was blowing in off the Atlantic, causing my auburn curls to dance around my pallid face. My hollow eyes stared out at the seemingly endless waters before me.

The boat I was about to board would be my portal to this prison, this damned curse. It would take me to another world, another dimension, another _existence_.

"Miss Hanley? Belladonna?"

I spun around in a grand sweep of inky black skirts with embroidery like stars. Margaret, my handmaiden, was a few paces behind me, scanning the crowds desperately for me. Scared I'd try to run off again. Her expression was all panic and frustration, wisps of her own blonde hair slipping out of the bun she wore at the nape of her neck. My twin brother James was at her side. Although we differed slightly in looks- my reddish brown curls were met with his stick straight hair of nearly the same color, and where my eyes were a hauntingly vivid green, his were a paler shade that gave the effect of an early spring morning- we were mirror images within. We had been raised children of privilege, taught that whatever we wanted, we could have, if only a few strings were pulled. James was my best friend, my confident, my everything. He completed me, and I was grateful to have him with me on this journey into the unknown.

Save a few trunks of clothing and the couple possessions I truly treasured, Margaret and my brother would be the only things I brought along to my new life.

Margaret spotted me, a smile of relief sliding onto her lips that had thinned with age. "Miss Hanley, the ship is letting passengers on now," she told me as she came to stand beside me, James in tow. My brother caught sight of my miserably pitiful expression and placed a reassuring hand on the small of my back. As it always had, his presence brought me instant comfort. "We'd better hurry; we wouldn't want to miss it."

Oh no, that would be quite a tragedy.

xxxx

The year was 1692, and the Hanleys were among the most respected families in England. That is, until my brother and I returned home from afternoon tea one day to find both our parents dead in the parlor of Hanley Manor. Nobody could explain the deaths. The Hanleys had no enemies, and they were much too religious for it to be suicide.

James and I cared much less with how it had happened than the fact that our parents were _dead_. Finite. The end. There would be no coming back. We were alone.

None of our relatives in England would take us in. they believed us to be cursed; clearly we had sinned and it had brought on the untimely demise of our parents. There was only one option left. We were to be sent to America to live with our uncle.

xxxx

I'd heard my share of talk about the Colonies, but I never thought I'd ever see them for myself. Across vast oceans was no place for a noble such as myself.

If it was possible, Salem, Massachusetts was even worse than I'd imagined. Some of these houses could have fit in my bedroom back at my manor house.

"Not a very lively place, is it?" I sneered in a biting tone, eyeing the vacant dirt paths with condescending eyes. James' own expression was grim as he scanned the place we were now to call home.

Margaret, as usual, tried to make light of the matter. "Well, one of these houses must belong to your uncle," she said. Her attempt to be cheerful was corrupted by the distain in her voice. She no longer tried to hide that she would have much rather been home in England, where we ad fireplaces to keep us warm and maids to brew our evening tea.

At last we came to a point of desperation, and so we resorted to knocking on the door of a house near to us. I wondered internally if the force of it wouldn't send it to rubble. Certainly it didn't look very sturdy.

It was a good thirty seconds before we heard the sounds of locks being undone, and the door was pulled open about an inch. Wary eyes peered out at us from the darkness within.

I offered the man a bright smile. "Hello," I greeted. "My name is Belladonna Hanley. This is my brother James and our house- mistress Margaret Plumy. We are looking for the home of our uncle, Charles Hanley." My words were delivered beautifully, if I do say so myself.

The man looked visibly relieved; he allowed a cautious smile of his own to creep onto his face as the door was opened a little more.

"Miss Hanley, welcome to Salem. Your uncle has talked of little but your arrival for weeks."

James gave him a sarcastic sort of smile. "I can tell just how excited he was by the glorious welcome we received." Discreetly I elbowed him in the side. If the man noticed, he chose to ignore it.

"These are bad times here in Salem," he explained gravely.

Ever the protective one, Margaret gave him a suspicious look. "Bad, how, exactly?" She demanded.

The man leaned in closely. "Its bad luck to talk of such things"? He warned, but since you're new, I think that it's only fair to give you a warning." James and Margaret and I were all waiting with wide eyes for him to continue. He drew it out to build up suspense and dramatic effect. Finally, he uttered a few words that changed our lives forever. "Salem's been cursed."

I couldn't help it. I let out a laugh. Both the man and Margaret looked at me in horror. But the absolute preposterousness of it all was positively… well, preposterous.

"Cursed?" Margaret repeated faintly. "Cursed, how?"

"Famine, poverty, droughts, infertile soil…" his voice trailed off. "But that's not the worst of it. That's not even half. Salem has been plagued by… witches."

I was quite sure that Margaret was about to lose it. I could tell she was thinking that if we started running now we might be able to make it back to the boat before it left.

I was less convinced. "There's no such thing as witches," I said quietly.

Already the man was backing into his house and closing the door. His feral gaze was trained on me, staring as if I were a minion of Satan himself. "You'll be next," he warned. "You will be next."

xxxx

Uncle Charles, it turned out, lived in the grandest house in all of Salem. I suppose us Hanleys never lost the lust of power and wealth regardless of where the tides took us. Our trio approached his front door purposefully. We were all ready to be out of the sun and away from the (supposed) curse of Salem.

In other words, we all wanted to be back in England.

James walked beside me, our hands brushing occasionally. I gave him a wistful sort of smile. Neither of us had mentioned our parents much since that fateful day, but I knew that he was just as torn up over it as me. Our parents had been good people. Where was the justice? What purpose could God have had for them that had taken them from us?

It wasn't fair.

James returned my smile in full. "I'm sure we'll adjust to Salem," he murmured quietly.

I could only hope that he was right.

Uncle Charles opened the door in much the same manner as the other man. I knew it was my Uncle Charles because he had the same angled jaw and gleaming eyes that my mother had been born with. She had said that nobody in the world had a better brother, but I was certain that James could beat anyone in that department.

James was the one to introduce us this time, and then we were being rushed into the house, where Uncle promptly dead-bolted the door and sighed in relief.

"James! Belladonna! It's so good to see you both," he cooed. I couldn't tell for sure the level of sincerity, but something in his steely gray eye told me that he saw us as more of a burden than a gift.

We went through the typical, expected motions of a reunion of this sort. Uncle was most sorrowed by the death of his baby sister and her husband. "They were well loved," he said to us both. "And you two are their smitten images."

We set off to take our trunks up to our room- Margaret and I were to share the bed, and James would have a makeshift cot upon the floor. Already I was questioning how long I could live like this.

"Better rest well," Uncle warned us before retiring to his own room for the night. "I'm afraid you'll find life in the Colonies is nothing like the privileged life you lived back in England."

xxxx

Whoever said that hard work was good for the soul had obviously never known the decadence of servants waiting on their hand and foot all hours of the day.

Well, okay, Salem really wasn't as bad as I'd perceived, once I fell into a sort of routine. James and I were put to work the very next day- James was to help with the farming, and I with the usual women's work of cooking, cleaning, sewing, and laundry.

Most of the clothes I'd brought along with me from the Old World were utterly useless and inappropriate here in America. They were too elaborate, too elegant. The only thing I still wore persistently was an emerald necklace that my mother had given me for my thirteenth birthday. To match my eyes, she had said.

A few months into my stay in Salem, I was about to retire to bed, brushing through my knotted and matted curls, when I realized that something was not right.

My necklace was missing.

In a frenzy, I slipped into my shoes and pulled a shawl around myself, and then I started off into the night.

It was dangerous business, going outside, especially in a town as superstitious as Salem. But I had no choice. That necklace was my last hope, my only way to cling to my mother now that she was gone and I was an ocean away from the world she had lived in.

I went to the well, for that was the only place I had gone outside all day. Blinded by my tears, I dropped to the ground and began to feel through the grass. It was too dark to see, and panic had dulled my senses. Hysteria rushed through my veins, sending my mind into dark, spiraling memories.

"What are you doing?"

I fell back in fear, a small shriek escaping my lips, and felt my hand fall on something ice cold and painfully hard.

My necklace.

My green eyes peered through the shadows to make out a figure about a foot away, staring at me.

"Oh, I was looking for my necklace," I explained to whoever it was. Holding my necklace tightly, I rose to my feet, trying to brush some of the dirt from my skirt. The figure moved out of the shadows and I was left facing a nine year old girl.

"Is is a special necklace?"

I knew her and her sisters, though not well. But I knew that they were the cause of all the panic here in Salem. They were the ones that had the town convinced witches were on the loose.

"Yes," I told her. "It belonged to my mother, back in England. It means the world to me, you see, for its all I have to remember her by. Sometimes when I'm holding it I swear I can feel magic flowing through me."

The little girl stared up at me with wide eyes. "I bet your mother was very pretty."

I gave her a small smile. "She was."

The girl didn't look like she was going to speak again; she just kept staring up at me with her ghostly blue eyes, so I muttered a goodbye and returned to my house.

xxxx

"Bella! Good God, Belladonna, wake up!"

My eyes fluttered open enough to make out James' frantic figure standing beside my bed. His green eyes were filled with terror and he was greatly paled. I pushed myself into a sitting position, my expression changing to mirror that of my twin.

"What's going on?" I murmured sleepily.

"Bella, it's madness out there! They've been trying to break in since sun-up!"

"Who?" I demanded, suddenly feeling achingly awake.

"Everyone, the townspeople, I don't know specifically. But, Bella, they're coming, and their coming for you!"

A jolt of sharp pain rushed through my head. They were… I was… and they… "Oh, God," I whispered. The very first day I'd arrived in Salem was suddenly vividly clear to me, replaying in my mind over and over and over again. "You'll be next."

James nodded frantically. "He warned us, and now it's finally happened. Bella, they think you're a witch!"

In three quick steps I was beside my trunk and pulling out the first dress I saw, stepping into it without much thought. Then I paused mid-turn. "Where is Margaret?"

My twin was silent for but a moment. "She went out to try to stop the hoards," he said quietly. "They've taken her away, locked her in the jail for trying to defend a witch."

My heart lurched in my chest. How could this have happened? I had never, _never_ done anything to make the people of Salem say such preposterous things about me. I had done my work and paid my respect and really just kept to myself. I was a responsible, religious young woman who never questioned authorities, who feared the good Lord like any Christian.

James seemed to be reading my thoughts. "Don't cry," he whispered to me; until then I hadn't even noticed I had been. I stepped forward into his arms and let him envelope me in them. My head was buried in his shoulder as tears began to rain from my closed eyes, raining and washing away all the emotions within me. All the while my brother was stroking my hair gently and telling me that he loved me, that it would be alright.

The front door banged open.

My sobs came harder, though I knew that crying would do me no good. Nothing could save me now. There had been four executions already, and I had only been here for a few short months. I looked up into James' eyes (my best friend, my confident, my _everything_) and wondered if I would ever see those eyes again. Or feel his arms around me again. Or live to see another sunrise.

There wasn't much thought behind my next action, but a moment later I was pressing my lips to James' own, kissing him furiously. I could hear their footsteps, ever closer and closer, and I hardly cared. My eyes fell shut as I lost myself in James, in this moment that I would have traded the world for. Because he was James. Because I loved him. He was my other half; our souls were one, ripped apart and split between our two bodies. In a sense, I suppose I was merely rejoining us.

My bedroom door was thrown open, slamming against the wall. I tore myself out of James' arms and spun to face them all.

My Uncle Charles was among them.

"You witch!" A citizen shouted. My eyes fell upon the very same man who had warned me that my demise would come swiftly. "You probably killed your parents with your evil ways! You unholy creature. We'll send you back to Hell where you belong."

James couldn't stop them as they dragged me away.

xxxx

The second time I was condemned to Hell, I was seventeen. I was young, and had so much life left to live. I was plagued with injustices. The wind was blowing in off the Atlantic, causing my auburn curls to dance around my pallid face. My hollow eyes stared out at the crowds of people before me.

Ten council men had spoken against me. My uncle had been one of them.

And now I was standing up on a podium. There was a post behind me. A man I didn't have the willpower to identify was tying me up to it, tight enough that I couldn't get free. Not that I would have tried.

My vision was blurred, but I could still see my brother, standing in the back of the hoards. His expression was vacant. I tried to convey a message to him through my gaze- _I love you. No matter what happens, I will always love you_. I hoped he understood.

One last wide sweep, one last cry for help. Nobody answered, not that I'd expected them to.

The fire was lit. I closed my eyes.


End file.
